Why a leadership brand matters for the Chief People Officer and their team
Your role as a Chief People Officer (CPO) – and the role of your team – is evolving rapidly. What was once largely about internal HR operations is now deeply integrated into business strategy, culture, risk, transformation and stakeholder trust.
In this context, cultivating a personal leadership brand is no longer optional – it’s now recognised as a core strategic asset. Here’s why.
1. As CPO, your mandate has expanded — and so has your need for influence
- Recent data shows that 85% of CPOs in Australia and New Zealand are seeking to upskill, emphasising strategic leadership, influencing decision-making, and embedding HR strategy into overall business planning. (Human Resources Director, March 2025)
- Your remit increasingly includes shaping culture, guiding transformation, and safeguarding reputation — placing People & Culture squarely at the executive table.
- In organisations where HR leaders are treated as business leaders, HR becomes a critical lever for growth, cost management, risk mitigation and long-term value creation.
The People & Culture leader can no longer afford to think of themselves as a “behind-the-scenes custodian.” As CPO, you are a key business leader. A personal leadership brand helps you show up accordingly — with credibility, clarity, and confidence.
2. A defined leadership brand amplifies your team’s impact on culture, trust and reputation – essential enablers of business success
- As identified in a recent article, organisations are increasingly developing leaders’ personal brands as part of broader cultural and reputational strategy. This is not just an important consideration for senior leaders, client-facing or business development teams, but for internally-focused teams also. Organisations are now recognising a strong personal brand as a bedrock of influence and confidence for employees focused on all kinds of leadership and communication.
- A strong, consistent leadership voice across your team helps build stakeholder trust — internally (employees, management, board) and externally (partners, regulators, market). This starts with the CPO’s personal brand and continues with their leadership and mentoring of team members, as they develop their presence as a unified, authoritative team, and as individual professionals.
In essence: a leadership brand becomes a lever to translate strategy and values into lived reality across the organisation, and to be seen as a true peer at the decision-making table.
3. A trusted leadership brand helps navigate today’s People & Culture team challenges: complexity, uncertainty and stakeholder expectations
- In today’s world, organisations face heightened reputational risk, regulation, talent competition, digital disruption — all while managing culture, engagement and transformation. A clear leadership brand gives you a platform to lead with consistency and clarity.
- It also helps you build credibility when presenting to boards, executives, shareholders and other challenging stakeholders: by showing who you are, what you stand for, and why your people agenda matters to the business. A leadership brand is not self-promotion; it’s strategic alignment between people, culture and performance.
What forward-looking CPOs in Australia are doing — and what works
According to recent reporting, many CPOs are rethinking how they operate — and adapting accordingly. Common approaches now include:
- Upskilling internally — many are investing in strategic leadership, data literacy, influence and business acumen, acknowledging the broader remit of the role.
- Positioning HR as a brand function — in some organisations, People & Culture is partnering with Communications, Marketing or Employer Brand teams to ensure consistency between internal culture and external reputation.
- Leveraging personal visibility — senior HR leaders increasingly see value in building thought leadership, sharing insights publicly (e.g. LinkedIn, industry events) to shape how the business — and external stakeholders — view their function and priorities.
- Aligning personal brand with organisational purpose and values — this alignment ensures authenticity and reduces the risk that personal brand efforts are dismissed as superficial or self-serving.
What this means for you and your People & Culture team
If you lead People & Culture, embracing a leadership brand mindset can help you:
- Elevate the function of People & Culture from service provider to strategic enabler and influence how culture, talent and people strategy are perceived and led at board and executive level;
- Attract, retain and engage talent who buy into purpose, clarity and consistent leadership, while reinforcing culture levers such as values and behaviours;
- Reinforce trust and credibility for the organisation externally, especially important in regulated or high-risk environments.
At the team level, this requires shifting from seeing brand-building as marketing’s job to recognising it as an outcome of leadership behaviours — repeated, consistent, credible actions that reflect the organisation’s values and vision.
Practical steps: How CPOs can begin building their leadership brand today
- Clarify your leadership positioning. Start with a tight, authentic articulation of what you stand for and what you focus on as a People Leader, and how that aligns with organisational purpose. Think beyond generic language to what’s distinctive about how you lead and why it matters.
- Integrate brand thinking into HR strategy. Embed leadership brand considerations into talent management, culture programs, organisational development thinking, learning programs, internal communications and stakeholder engagement — not as a side project, but as part of how HR delivers value.
- Use data + human insight to build credibility. Combine people data (engagement, attrition, performance indicators) with narrative about culture and human impact. This dual lens helps position People & Culture as rigorous, strategic and human-centred.
- Be visible in the right places. Whether through internal forums, town halls, board updates — or external platforms (industry events, thought pieces) — consistent, values-aligned visibility builds recognition and trust.
- Align your personal brand with team and organisational brand. Ensure what you stand for as a leader complements and amplifies the organisation’s purpose, values and culture, and actively bring your team into an exploration of brand expression through their own roles.
As the scope of the CPO role continues to expand, the importance of personal leadership branding — for you and your People & Culture team — becomes harder to ignore. When done well, it’s not self-promotion: it’s strategic influence, credibility and cultural leadership.
Pssst… We do this work all day long. Ask us for our checklist tailored for CPOs to help them define and build their leadership brand.
Related material
How personal brand development supports a culture of leadership
How CPOs can get their Board & Executive aligned